Quote Originally Posted by JJ
Yeah, sure and the second example is P.R.C. where communism doesn't work too. The GDP is growing there for 8% per year.
PRC's economy has certain capitalistic features, in Russia there was also economical growth during NEP. So PRC isn't a good example whether communism works or not.
Quote Originally Posted by JJ
HR is an ideology and it's a totalitarian
With ideology of human rights being criticized here, I'd like to say some words in its defense.
Let's take any two different persons A and B, HR ideology says that the rights of A are justified as long as they don't contradict to B's rights and vice versa. That is the basics of human rights ideology. All the other possible ideologies can only add the following:
1) Some proof that there are some criteria by which A can be considered more important than B and therefore should have more rights. All these proofs and criteria are subjective.
2) Say that yes, A and B deserve equal rights but those rights should be restricted not only by what was written above but also by something else. But who and why has the right to decide what that "something else" should be? So it's also subjective.
Either way, we only go deeper into subjectivity. So even if the human rights ideology is totalitarian (though personally I don't think so), then any other is also.
Quote Originally Posted by bad manners
I always find it amusing how the "human rights" proponents undermine the very ideology by denying the very basic human right, the right of peoples to shape their state the way they want it.
There's actually no state that is shaped the way it's inhabitants want. The shape of a state depends on a lot of factors and has more to do with the circumstances and the will of certain groups than with people's will. Not to say that the term "the right of peoples" is a rather vague thing, and it's certainly not a basic human right (at least because when one speaks about the right of a person it's clear what is meant but when one speaks about the right of the group of people it requires more assumptions and explanations).

Though I must agree that some who consider themselves the human rights proponents are often overdoing it, which mostly shows in their tendency to overuse banning (like Novodvorskaya wanting communist ideology to be banned, for example).

As for HRW, it watches the human rights not only in the countries with "opposite social system" but in USA and EU as well.